There is little that speaks more to the history of Camden, New Jersey, than the road that bisects it, the Admiral Wilson Boulevard. It is named after Admiral Henry Braid Wilson Jr., a Camden native son who, after he joined the Navy before World War I, never returned to the city. He had a distinguished career, capped off by his service as the superintendent of the Naval Academy.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Boulevard was emblematic of the American Dream. At its eastern terminus was the first traffic circle in the United States, the Airport Circle, and just beyond that was the first commercial airport in the Philadelphia area, where stunt pilots and famous folks would fly in or stop over and take a dip in the gigantic outdoor swimming pool at its fringe.

On the west end, about three miles away, was the Delaware River Bridge, a grand structure built for the 1926 Sesquicentennial celebration in Philadelphia — the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time. In between sprung up more “biggests” and “firsts” or at least “somewhat unusuals.” The Hollingshead family, which owned one of the first automotive parts factories in the country, built the first drive-in movie theater near the Pennsauken border. There was a contraption just west of the drive-in called the Whoopie Coaster, a wood-and-metal structure on which patrons drove their cars up and down a roller-coaster-like track.

Along the southern side was a gas station which, during the Depression, claimed to be the largest filling station in the country. And just to the west of that was the first Sears “suburban” department store — though still within the borders of Camden, it was the first Sears not located in a downtown area, and the large parking lot made the store suitable for freshly arrived suburbanite families driving their new cars.

Most likely those cars were purchased at one of the three big dealerships along the Boulevard, and as you drove along it, you could see sailboats on the dammed-up estuary of the Delaware River — named Cooper after the family of the author James Fenimore Cooper — that ran along the Boulevard’s south side.

Toward the bridge, the Boulevard separated the primarily residential or shopping areas of North and East Camden from the more industrial, commercial and governmental areas closer to or in the downtown area.

Yet, the promise of the early decades of the 20th century dissipated dramatically. Today, the drive from Airport Circle — the airport left in the 1950s and the circle was reconfigured into a warren of overpasses and underpasses — to the now-Benjamin Franklin Bridge is, at best, somewhat of a horror.

The Sears store survived for a time in its Greek-columned glory, but was finally demolished this summer, the land possibly being developed by Campbell Soup Co., the last major commercial employer in the city. Across the highway, behind the unmanaged bushes and underbrush, is a tent city of nomads and the homeless.

None of the car dealerships or motels has survived; only a few gas stations, a liquor store and a fur storage building — both about where the Whoopie Coaster and drive-in once stood — remain. The Cooper River, never quite managed correctly, floods the road regularly in rainstorms.

East Camden is still residential, but run-down. However, it’s an oasis compared to North Camden, which could be the most sad-sack expanse of urban land in North America. Camden is, most years, statistically the poorest city in the United States and the most violent, its poverty and murder rates superseding all other cities, large and small. North Camden is the nexus for that.

Most blocks have gaps in housing that look like a moonshiner’s denture — spaces more than teeth. Cars stop abruptly in the middle of the street, day or night, blocking other traffic, of which there really isn’t much, presumably for drug deals or prostitution, hopefully not for the violence that comes with either one.

The most depressing aspect of North Camden is that it is so close to two kinds of real dreams. Just across the bridge are the vibrant and historic neighborhoods of Old City and Society Hill in Philadelphia, home to the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, chic restaurants and million-dollar homes. And if you travel just four miles east of Camden, you will arrive in Haddonfield, a colonial town that is the richest in South Jersey.

Camden sits in despair, like the Valley of Ashes in “The Great Gatsby,” wedged between the marvels of the bigger city and the grandeur of East and West Egg.
Yet, there are those who see beyond a leveled wasteland. They envision a new verdant forest, or at least a small clipped hedge, in the Camden landscape. Faced with the ultimate American urban challenge, they have chosen to find their own private Idaho and work as mightily as they can to make a difference in their own way.

They don’t want to be called heroes or saints. But there is something about Camden and its depths that motivates them. Camden, after all, is about its people, and people are always worth trying to save.

John Valore, the first white coach or player at Camden High School in 40 years, hopes to bring back Panther spirit at the school, which once was a basketball powerhouse.Avi Steinhardt for Inside Jersey

JOHN VALORE
REVIVING THE PANTHER SPIRIT

There is still a sign that reads, “Castle on the Hill,” which is what Camden High School was called when it was perhaps the most impressive high school building in the state during its heyday in the first half of the 20th century — Gothic and massive, overlooking the then upper-middle-class neighborhood of Parkside.

The building is still impressive-looking, even though some of the walls and towers have missing bricks and the inside halls are dowdy. The one place that shimmers, though, is the Clarence Turner Gym, named after the mega-successful basketball coach who spent the better part of 40 years, off-and-on from the late 1960s, leading the basketball Panthers to record wins.

There are other sports honored by banners inside the gym, but the overwhelming number of those banners shout out the names of the two dozen or so boys and girls who scored 1,000 points for Camden or of the nine state championships the boys team has won. Several of those boys played in the National Basketball Association, including the greatest Panther of them all, Dajuan Wagner, the all-time New Jersey leading scorer whose career was cut short by disease after an impressive start with the Cleveland Cavaliers just before LeBron James came onto the scene.

Wagner, now 30, has been showing up in the gym watching practice hoping for a Panther return to glory. After Clarence Turner resigned a decade ago in a dispute with school administration, the team faded into mediocrity for a time. Last season, though, it went 21-11, but the coach, Cetshwayo Byrd, an alumnus, was fired over allowing a documentary crew to make a film about the team without proper clearance.

The new coach, John Valore, 68, was a surprise, to put it mildly. All of those names on the banners celebrating the 1,000 point threshold are African-American, dating to Ron “Itchy” Smith in 1960. There hasn’t been a white player or coach at Camden High for more than 40 years — until now.

“I know that the basketball team at Camden is one of the most important things in the community here, and I hope it stays that way,” says Valore. He is pretty familiar with Turner gym, since he visited it every year for the 35 years he was the basketball coach at Cherry Hill High School East before retiring in 2010. “There is nothing like playing Camden at Camden,” he says. “There are no fans better and, this year, we hope there won’t be any team better.”

Valore says his “godfather” is Arthur Barclay, one of Wagner’s teammates in the last Panther glory years a decade-and-a-half ago. Barclay is running now for City Council, but said he would also be a volunteer assistant for Valore, as will another Camden 1,000-point scorer, Vic Carstarphen. During their years, it was difficult to get a seat for any home game, and many young and even older men from the community turned up at practices, just to have a latch onto the team.

Gangs were prevalent during those years everywhere in Camden, but basketball players were said to have a “pass” not to join gangs or to be hassled by them. The Panthers’ success on the court reflected onto the community, sometimes the only good news coming out of the city.

Valore is excited to be part of a revival of that spirit, and says he couldn’t care less about his being white and doesn’t believe his players care either. “And if we win, certainly no one will care,” he adds.

With the former players’ support — and his 553 wins, eighth-most all-time in South Jersey — Valore doesn’t view himself as a savior, just a man with a challenge.

“The players are raw, and I am here because I hope I can make them do something special,” he says. “Everyone, no matter what they do, needs encouragement. That is why I am so excited about this. I just want those stands filled like in the old days.”

Community organizer Sean M. Brown is helping turn this boarded-up building at 940 Newton Ave. into an incubator for nonprofit businesses through his group Young Urban Leaders.Avi Steinhardt for Inside Jersey

SEAN M. BROWN
HE HAS A DREAM AT 940 NEWTON AVE.

The woman ranting on the porch of 940 Newton Ave. could be strung out or looking for a john, but whatever the case, is not part of a wholesome scene. All the windows of 940 Newton are boarded up, as are many others along the block.

“The reality is crackheads and sex and prostitutes. It’s a complete mess,” says Sean M. Brown, one of those Camden community activists with, if not rose-colored glasses, at least the determination of hope. “But we will get the things done we want.”

Legend has it that while he was studying at Crozer Theological Seminary across the Delaware River in Chester, Pennsylvania, in the early 1950s, Martin Luther King Jr. used to frequently visit either relatives or family friends at 940 Newton. Brown, 32, sees that as karma. The nonprofit group he created, Young Urban Leaders, got the deed to the property last summer and he hopes to convert the rowhouse into an incubator for nonprofit businesses — the kind of economic spur to which he feels Camden can aspire.

“It’s work. We aren’t expecting big industry, but nonprofits, those are realistic,” says Brown. He has started to look for grants and donations. He figures it will take $50,000 to $100,000 and a lot of sweat equity to make 940 Newton habitable. But he has bucked odds before in his life, he says, and this will be no different. He grew up in Camden until age 8 when his family moved to nearby Pennsauken. Then he came back to Camden to his Young Urban Leaders group and attended Rutgers-Camden, majoring in public policy. He was shot while a bystander in a botched robbery several years ago, so he knows well the perils of the city.

There is no reason why Brown has to subject himself to the dangers of living in Camden — he and his longtime girlfriend have two preschool children — except the main reason.

“I want to show that Camden is a place where everyone can have a chance. It is difficult, yes, but it is something I feel I have to do,” he says.

For three years, ending last spring, Brown was an appointed member of the Camden City school board, but when it became strictly advisory, with the state takeover of the school system, he resigned. Brown had been a self-described pain in the butt, often challenging the moves of Mayor Dana Redd, who had appointed him. He even got censured, posting on Facebook barbed criticisms of school administrators. He said he felt good about his efforts trying to get some reforms in the schools, but he didn’t want to be on a board that would have no real power, so it was time to devote energy to his graduate degree and the Young Urban Leaders.

He knows that 940 Newton, even if he can get it cleaned up and running, will not be Silicon Valley, but he feels he has a realistic expectation of what it can do in Camden.
“People who just want to get off the ground will need a good copy machine, or some office space or a place where they can get advice,” he says. He doesn’t expect the next Google or Walmart to come out of 940 Newton, just a step up and out for otherwise ignored aspiring city residents.

“It can be so much good guys versus bad guys in Camden, but it is my idea that good guys just have to be forceful,” he says. “My family, my social network, is just positive. That is the goal. I’m not naive, but I have to think that being optimistic is at least part of turning things around here in Camden.”

John Giannotti sculpted a statue commemorating African-American Matthew Henson planting the American flag at the North Pole in 1909.John Munson for The Star-Ledger

JOHN GIANNOTTI
THE JOY OF DISCOVERY

Matthew Henson is ecstatic, the fury collar of his parka outlining his smiling face, and his faithful dog, King, looking, well, faithfully up at him. Henson has just become the first non-Inuit to get to the North Pole, although for a half-century at least, no one will know that.

Henson, in this version made of epoxy resin and steel with a bronze patina, stands 14-feet-tall in front of the Camden Shipyard and Maritime Museum, housed in the old Episcopal church on lower Broadway, hard by drug corners not far to the north and what is left of the formerly thriving port of Camden to the South. Henson is John Giannotti’s fifth outdoor sculpture in Camden, and possibly his favorite because of its place, not only in space but in spirit.

“There is a great deal of pride here now for Henson. The kids in this community need heroes they can relate to,” says Giannotti, 67. Henson, you see, was African-American, the assistant to Robert Peary, whose expedition 104 years ago led to the discovery of the North Pole. That a black man was the real first man to the Pole — Peary himself was about 100 yards back, injured and on a sled at the time — is perhaps more important in Camden than in Baltimore, Henson’s hometown, which has no memorials to him.

Giannotti — whose statues of Walt Whitman, who lived out his last years in Camden, and Lewis Coriell, a pioneer in stem-cell research, are elsewhere in the city — says the unveiling of the Henson statue was just a hoot.

“There were all these kids from South Camden singing songs their teacher had written about Henson and even performing a play,” he says of the ceremony on the 100th anniversary of Henson’s feat in April 2009. “There were kids dressed in parkas, and igloos and fake snow. It may have been one of the best days in Camden in recent years.”

The museum was the brainchild of professors in the Urban Studies department at Rutgers-Camden. The New York Ship Company, not far away, was a major employer in Camden from the 1920s through the 1970s, and even before that, before the Civil War, Camden was a major boat-building harbor.

The museum opened four years ago after the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, which had acquired the old church and rectory, more or less willed it to the founders. There are now boat-building classes for teens in the community, a section of the museum devoted to Henson, whose feat was finally acknowledged in the 1950s, and whatever artifacts local people have donated to fill the old rectory. It is a pleasant accident of history that the Kite, the ship that Peary and Henson used for their expedition, stopped at Camden, and there unloaded the ballast it needed in the Arctic, Those stones went to build the foundation of the rectory where the museum is now housed.

Giannotti is another one of those people who want to hug Camden, hoping for its revival. For 14 years, before his son started school a dozen years ago, he and his wife lived in a 200-year-old Federal-period mansion just off the Rutgers-Camden campus.

“I still love that house. It is the grandest place I will ever live,” says Giannotti, who was a sculpture professor at Rutgers-Camden at the time. “And I am proud that my work is in all corners of the city. But you look into the eyes of these kids who were there at the Henson statue dedication and you know there is a chance. It just needs people to work at it.”

Joseph M. Paprzycki turned an abandoned bar once owned by his grandparents into a thriving neighborhood theater in South Camden.Avi Steinhardt for Inside Jersey

JOSEPH M. PAPRZYCKI
STAGING A COMEBACK

Walt’s Café was the working man’s bar that stood for 40 years on the corner of Fourth and Jasper streets in South Camden. It wasn’t the grand and glorious who bellied up, but the guys who built ships on the docks and did the dirty work in the factories that weren’t too far away.

Joseph M. Paprzycki used to come down to Walt’s as a kid because his grandparents, Walt and Sue Evanuk, owned the joint until Walt’s death in 1967. His dad then moved the family to the middle-class suburb of Oaklyn, where Paprzycki dreamed not of shots and beer, but of writing novels and plays.

Paprzycki, 56, has made a career out of running high school-oriented blood-donation programs for the Red Cross, but his heart has long been at Fourth and Jasper. In 2007, he rounded up some backers and added some of his own money and purchased the old Walt’s Café, which was abandoned and in disrepair. Though he had to tear it down, he and his nonprofit partners, the South Camden Theatre Company, built a 99-seat theater and practice space, and the first play staged there was “Last Rites,” a saga based on his grandparents’ bar, written by Paprzycki.

Since then, the company has staged several dozen plays, with both professional actors and aspiring kids and adults from the largely Hispanic neighborhood nearby. There is little or no theater in Camden’s schools, but Paprzycki holds workshops at the theater whenever possible. Nine Saturday mornings a year, he has movies for the neighborhood children. “We do the whole thing they wouldn’t get otherwise — popcorn and candy and explanations of the movies,” he says.

Paprzycki writes a play a year, more or less, and while he still holds onto his Red Cross gig, he dreams one day of Camden being the base of some kind of theater renaissance.
“People have come from South Carolina and the Main Line (in suburban Philadelphia) and many other places to see the plays, so they aren’t afraid of the neighborhood,” he says. “I think we could be like Provincetown on Cape Cod, a place for neighborhood theater that people wouldn’t expect. Camden isn’t just squalor. It is a place where people can still dream.”

The corner of Haddon Avenue and Liberty Street is cleared, save for a sign proclaiming a new modern building planned for the site. It is a sign that might cheerily inhabit a similar space in a growing suburb, but there probably hasn’t been a new building along this long stretch of Haddon Avenue — one that used to be a main shopping and entertainment district of East Camden — for a couple of generations.

There is dilapidated housing across the street and some shuttered businesses up and down the block, but that doesn’t disturb Bridget Phifer, executive director of Parkside Business and Community in Partnership. Her husband got a job in Philadelphia in 1999 and, having worked in community development in Newark and East Orange, she saw Camden as the challenge she wanted.

“The people in Parkside were clamoring for change, for cleaning up abandoned houses, for getting back to what it was,” she says. The blocks of Parkside rowhomes and cottages were built primarily in the 1920s through 1950s, and in those years were a mix of Jewish, black and Italian residents. The white-flight from the area happened quickly, primarily in the early 1960s, but the deterioration didn’t start until theriots in the 1970s.

Phifer, with a degree from the Rutgers Public Management program, started getting foundation and other types of grants — small and steady. Her organization has now rehabbed 230 properties in Parkside, 180 rentals and 50 owner-occupied homes.

The Haddon Avenue building will be her biggest project yet. Phifer, 47, says a young pharmacist has committed to bringing her business to the first floor, as has a small bakery. She says one office on the second floor is committed and she is in negotiations with Public Service Electric & Gas to put a green-oriented marketing facility and museum of sorts on the third floor.

“It will spur development up and down Haddon Avenue; that is what we hope,” she says.

The fact that there are virtually no businesses open there now does not deter her optimism. She says her organization has “600 stakeholders” who pay $12 annual dues.

“People have hope in Parkside. We will do it. ... I understand that there are people who leave Camden and never come back, but really, it is no different than Philadelphia, and you can see what is going on there because people have confidence. That is all we need, and I am convinced there are enough people (so) that we will do it.”

The Rev. Jeff Putoff started Hopeworks ‘N Camden as a training facility for tech-oriented jobs, but it has also grown into a residential haven for youths to escape the chaos of the streets.Avi Steinhardt for Inside Jersey

THE REV.JEFF PUTOFF
REHAB FOR THE SOUL

The clean and sturdy rowhome is incongruous along State Street in North Camden. There is a garden along the side and stately doors in front leading onto a grand porch. Inside, 10 young people live with paintings on the wall and good furniture in all the bedrooms and the common spaces.

It is the dormitory of sorts for Hopeworks ‘N Camden, which, as its website says, aims to be “healing communities by creating safe pathways through which we own our histories and discover new choices.”

Its guiding light is the Rev. Jeff Putoff, who was assigned to North Camden by the Catholic Church 14 years ago after he was ordained and told to “work with youth in our parish.”

Putoff, 49, says it didn’t take long for him to learn how challenging that would be —70 percent of the kids in the neighborhood wouldn’t make it through high school; poverty and violence would be more the standards than smiles and jobs. What he did see, he says, was that the tech boom had taken hold most everywhere else in the country and that, even in Camden, there would be a need for tech-oriented jobs.

He started Hopeworks as a training center for those kinds of jobs — perhaps rudimentary, but real work. One room in a rowhouse became a floor, which is now three floors of training facilities and computer dens for practice, with facilitators and teachers on staff.

Yet Putoff knew there was more than just training necessary, at least in Camden. Even those who made it out into the wider world of work were not really psychologically ready for what most people think is “normal.”

“Every one of our people has seen violence and they are impacted by what they have seen,” he says. “You try to play Whac-A-Mole with it. You try to stop the pain when you see a kid who is traumatized by the violence. But it comes back again and again.”

So, Putoff opened up the apartment next door to the training facility. As many as 10 students, mostly in their late teens and early 20s, can stay there, getting away at least a little bit from the violence on their streets, perhaps abuse in their homes, certainly the poverty and depression all around them. Putoff says he believed the surroundings had to be different, which is why there are more than 100 paintings, mostly by local artists, on the walls and comfortable furniture all around.

“We used to think we wanted to get them a job,” he says about Hopeworks, which is supported not only by the Catholic Church, but also other churches and foundations in the area. “Then we had too many people who got a job and went on for a while and then blew up.”

What the young people in North Camden needed, Hopeworks discovered, is a kind of rehab. “You would immediately rehab your knee if you had an injury and then an operation,” he says. “These kids have been injured for a lifetime — drug abuse, alcoholism, violence, whatever. Even if they didn’t actually participate, they can’t have avoided it.

“So, our job is not just to get them working, which is a big thing, I grant you, but to find them ways to rehab, for it is the only way they will succeed over a long time. The technology training is a scaffold. Now, we can work on their maladjusted behavior developed over the years. The best of them have coped. Now, they have to learn to thrive.

“All of this stuff people do in Camden is not a complete panacea. It is not pixie dust,” he says. “Everyone has to try hard, even these kids you know have a shot. You can’t just hand Camden something and walk away. It’s all possible, but it is hard, and it will take a long, long time before anyone is finished.”

Bridget Phifer, executive director of Parkside Business and Community in Partnership, has helped rehabilitate 230 properties in the Parkside neighborhood.

Rev. Putoff and Virginia Torres, right, show off the bounty of the organization’s community garden.